Boxing Monthly SAVAGES Mike Tyson

Utter garbage. Seems to me that this guy wasn't around during the 80's.

 

Tyson made knocking out giant mother****ers look so easy that they appeared to be talentless. But he was just that good. Michael Spinks is serious business and i doubt nobody else could do what Tyson did to him.

Louis suffered this as well, his opponents named the 'bum of the month' club

 

Stopped reading after this ..The guy is a moron !

 

Not an objectionable piece. May have an agenda. I dont buy into Tyson being this unbeatable monster in his prime but he was a hell of a lot better than this guy gives him credit for. Cant see many changing their position of tyson based on this article

 

This excerpt neglects to point out that Tyson lost the most important people in his camp in a very short time: The deaths of Cus D'Amato and Jimmy Jacobs were major blows to Tyson. They were people who could somewhat control him and they were replaced by users and yes men. Rooney left and Tyson's technique quickly began to deteriorate. So no, I do not agree with the premise in this article. It says that he failed on all his biggest nights. The Michael Spinks fight was his big night (if not his biggest). The Douglas fight is a big night only in hindsight. I believe the odds were around 40-1.
I hope it is not a change to his legend. Younger fans who were not around can not feel the impact he had on the sport. Tyson fights were major events. Every Tyson fight between 86 and 90 (roughly) was what Pac-Mayweather would be. That can't be dismissed. I think there is pretty clear seperation of the season's of Tyson's career: meteoric rise, gradual decline, post prison. Sure, evaluate his career as a whole and it will knock him down a few pegs. But I think his career is similar to a Donald Curry. He was a great fighter for a relatively short period of time.
Yeah, I think this article is unreasonably harsh and the premise of it is on very shaky ground.

 

:goodwell said

it looks like a horse****, revisionist piece to combat a tyson myth that no longer exists. the attitude that tyson is the best heavyweight and best boxer ever was gone by the late 90s. a more realistic perspective on his career is more prevalent in boxing circles. bitter, biased garbage

 

I have always been of the belief that Tyson got far too much credit for what he did to a career light-heavy in Spinks. Spinks was never a heavyweight, period. The scale can lie.

That said, this writer is being a bit harsh on him; under this kind of scrutiny, few fighters would seem as impressive in retrospect.

Too many "experts" and writers spend a lot of time picking fly **** out of pepper.

 

XPERT article full of facts! i will buy this BM issue tonite before teh **** shop before it closes at 9.

 

of course you will big george

 

If anything,this article is outdated.It's the type of thing that I would have expected to have read during the earlier years of the last decade,when the anti-Tyson sentiment - from the boxing community,mainsteam mediia and general public - was particularly high.


Tyson's currently about as popular and widely accepted by the mainstream as he's been since before the **** trial.The sympathetic documentary,the numerous comedic cameo roles that he's been involved - the general public and the media have warmed to him and don't see him as this raging lunatic anymore.


Tyson's legacy is very much safe and will only grow in the next couple of years.This journalist is in the minority of journalists who still feel this way about Tyson.

 

Yeah this about 12 years out of date as an article.Funny though.

Now if they savaged one of the well loved active mexican greats or some other highly regarded active fighter it would be shocking.Or one of the recent British greats they usually go light on criticism with...Hamed, Benn, even Haye or Hatton etc

I'd quite like to see an article denouncing Haye as an unskilled hack, myself.

 

Stupid article.

The writer's agenda actually makes me question his credibility. Add to the fact that he constantly refers to Tyson's "biggest fights" as the ones he lost.

Let me clarify what Tyson's biggest fights were:

vs. Berbick (chance to make history and he passed with flying colors)

vs. Tucker (first time the WBA, WBC, IBF was ever unified and shared the waist of one man)

vs. Spinks (Put it this way he got paid $22 million that night and 23 years later the HW Champ is getting paid 15-20 million)

vs. Ruddock (This was a big fight that had more PPVs than Holyfield vs Foreman despite not being a title fight. Ruddock was appearing to be the next big player in the division because the boxing public wasn't sold on Holyfield at that time. I should also add that Evander Holyfield ducked Razor Ruddock opting to fight a "softer touch" in Riddick Bowe after enduring the criticism for fighting Holmes and Foreman who were both over 40 at the time he fought them. Bowe was a former sparring partner, former Olympian young and strong making him an easy sell but was perceived to be lazy and manageable making it a safer choice. Tyson wrecked him).

vs. Holyfield II (The first fight didn't count this one did. Tyson Lost)

vs. Lewis (This was for erasing a decade worth of bad behaviour and would have guaranteed him a top 5 spot. didn't work out)

He is 4-2 in the biggest fights of his career.

Jim Jeffries and Lennox Lewis also never got up from a knockdown either but they are undoubtedly great. I personally think that the whole "coming from behind to win" is a terrible barometer for assessing one's greatness.

As for Spinks? He had just beaten Larry Holmes and TKO'd Gerry Cooney after dominating a deep LHW division. He never continued afterwards because like many people at the time he didn't believe Tyson was going to lose anytime soon nor did he believe that he titles would splinter seeing how active Tyson was as champion. So he felt no real reason to continue seeing how the public would never really buy into a rematch. Same with Holmes. Larry only fought on after Tyson lost his titles to Douglas, he felt that there was an opportunity to get a piece of the title seeing how the seemingly invincible Tyson has been "temporarily removed" from the titles and "lesser fighters" were in the mix.

If the writer includes Williams and Mcbride then he should criticize:

Ali for losing to Holmes and Berbick.
Holyfield for losing Larry Donald, James Toney, Valuev, etc.
Liston for losing to Martin
etc.

Tyson was undoubtedly a first ballot HOF and to suggest otherwise suggest to me that the author should cover MMA or NFL Football because boxing is clearly not his thing.

 

If Tyson is going to be excluded from the Hall of Fame then there is going to have to be a veritable holacaust of the Baers, Braddocks, Johansens, Nortons etc.

That is only based on resume.

If we base the argument on fame, then put him somwhere between Muhamad Ali and Sugar Ray Robinson!

 

Ridiculous article, agenda driven, very simplistic analysis. Tyson's win resume is 1 of the best in HW history, the skill level of his competition is 1 of the best in HW history, his losses aren't as bad as some of the other greats in HW history. Just because he never got off the canvas to win doesn't mean he didn't show a great heart, he overcame being hurt but didn't go down, he showed a terrific heart in Holyfield 1 but imo was facing a man who had his number